Drugs and Alcohol

Hashtag, selfie, energy drink...It’s clearly a sign of the times that energy drink is now found in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary: “a usually carbonated beverage that typically contains caffeine and other ingredients ... intended to increase the drinker's energy.”
"All the...
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Teens don’t understand the truth about Molly -- a popular, but dangerous party drug. Molly and its cousin, Ecstasy, are based on the drug MDMA (3, 4-methylenedioxy-N-methamphetamine). They think that Molly is a purer form of Ecstasy. Wrong.
A drug with many names: besides the names Molly and...
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Anna Nguyen, Healthy Kids blog Editor

Thursday, January 29, 2015, 5:30 AM

Many parents aren’t aware of the dangers of “pharming” parties and fail to talk to their teens about the dangers of abusing prescription drugs, according to a recent review article in the journal Contemporary Pediatrics.
While teens abusing prescription drugs is not a new problem...
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The American Academy of Pediatrics issued on Monday a new policy statement on marijuana that covers in detail many issues about marijuana in regard to adolescents and children. Unfortunately, the overwhelming theme of this new statement is, “We don’t know.”
The AAP engages in discussion...
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It was reported recently that a remarkable 11 percent of teens had used Human Growth Hormone, or what purported to be HGH, in the last year to promote athletic performance or appearance, according to results from the latest Partnership Attitude Tracking Study.
HGH and its variants have been banned...
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Drug testing can be a helpful tool in determining substance use or mental health disorders in adolescents. To help pediatricians determine whether and when drug testing may be useful and how to best use this procedure when it appears necessary, the American Academy of Pediatrics recently released an...
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Anna Nguyen, Healthy Kids blog Editor

Thursday, March 6, 2014, 5:30 AM

If you look up “NekNominate” on YouTube, here’s a preview of what you’ll find: A 20-something pouring beer down a toilet who is then whisked up by friends to drink it upside down. In another video, a young man mixes up a disturbing cocktail of alcohol, milk, live bugs, and a...
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Gary A. Emmett, M.D.

Wednesday, March 5, 2014, 5:30 AM

The media was obsessed when famous actor, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, apparently died of a heroin overdose last month. I was saddened last week when I worked a shift at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital nursery when a new baby was born having lost the father to an opiate overdose before the birth,...
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Anna Nguyen, Healthy Kids blog Editor

Wednesday, January 22, 2014, 5:30 AM

Need some help figuring out how to talk to your child about underage drinking? Wondering how the conversation will play out?
Start the Talk, is a new interactive online tool that helps parents practice tough conversations about underage drinking with their kids in a videogame-like environment.
It...
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The United States has a crisis in the abuse of prescription painkillers such as oxycodone and hydrocodone. The rate of newborns withdrawing from painkillers or opiates – called neonatal abstinence syndrome or NAS – in the US almost tripled from 2000 to 2009 (1.2 babies per 1000 newborns...
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